Not At Tea Time
by Gojirob
Summary: What happens when the hidebound talk shop? The people who only think they run the lives of Buffy Summers and Harry Potter do just that.


Not At Tea Time

by Rob Morris

LONDON, EARLY SUMMER 2002

Quentin Travers sat and sipped his coffee. He didn't like it at all, and the chain shop was far too trendy. But it was so far out of his usual path, he knew his signature-seeking aides would never find him. Plus, it was a rare opportunity to chat with a true peer, someone as burdened as he, though their jurisdictions rarely crossed.

"So it could have been any of ten boys? Yet that gadly would-be Gandalf fixates on the one who was attacked. Tsk. Cornelius, that you haven't finally moved to bring him low is a sure sign of either your supreme patience or that the position you hold has finally cracked you wide open."

Cornelius Fudge had made an exceedingly rare excursion outside his usual haunts. There was no choice. The brand of coffee he liked at midday was oddly resistant to conjuring. So off to this shop he went, forced to settle for using an extend-o spell on the two pounds or so he purchased once or twice every year. Plus, chatting with Quentin meant being with a peer who was yet outside all the wretched politics surrounding and subsuming his life.

"Don't assume either choice to be incorrect, Quentin. If I'd only had the foresight to move against Dumbledore when I was new as Minister, I'd have weathered the storm by now and likely would be thriving. Never happen now, and he's too canny to make a huge enough error to help my efforts along. My only hope is that the boy or his allies do. Yet an insinuation here, a few words to the fourth estate there, and I begin to see why --our fallen, corrupted fellow-- failed to do him in. He's too slippery. Probably all that grease from his eternally-unkempt hair."

Travers did not laugh as he might have felt like at Fudge's use of euphemism for his undead enemy wizard. Certainly between Nelly Giles' grandson, the Wyndham-Price boy and Jenny Rayne's loathsome nephew, there were enough people he preferred not to speak of by name. But the worst of them all wasn't even a Watcher. No, she was merely another disposable, temporary agent who should have died already and in fact had done so twice, not having the common decency to stay dead. He refused to even think of the jailed one spawned by all that colonial recklessness.

"Always smelled of set-up to me, your boy's story, that is. Could he have been the product of your fallen fellow's--passions? Perhaps he murdered the mother because she threatened to talk of it. The boy he let go because he wanted an heir."

Fudge summoned a note-pad that precisely copied Travers' words, then bade it go away.

"No, he resembles that hooligan James Potter too much for that, and no disguise spell would have survived his entire childhood. But, thank you, Quentin. A bit of insinuation of that sort in the Prophet's next edition is just what we were looking for. Have to phrase it all tightly, of course."

"Always glad to be of help, Cornelius. You're not the only one with a problem child, you know."

Fudge waved a finger in the air, and nodded.

"Yes, I recall now. Oh, Quentin. I know you have no say where the spell takes the power to next, but I would have, given a choice, kept it well away from the colonies, and especially back from their so-called 'left coast'. Half the wizard-kind I know from there are never in their bodies, and the other half are solicitors for some such law firm set up by three minor devils. And you are

paying for today's beverages and pastries. I smoothed a lot of feathers over what that Bergrosen girl tried to do."

Travers grumbled, but did not protest.

"It's that whole lot, Cornelius. I'd thought we'd gotten them to accept the matter of our supreme authority over them. I mean, our expedition during the Glorificus Rising had the fierce Miss Summers on her knees before us, begging that her beloved compromised Watcher be given his job back, and that her chums be permitted to die with her."

"Laid down the law, did you?"

Travis smiled, just a bit.

"Well, we had something she wanted and needed. That gave us the authority. This, despite the bilgewater she offered up about how we on the Council were all nothing to her. And the look on her face when I told her of Glorificus' true nature? Priceless. But they remain Yanks, and now even their dubious mentor is no longer guiding them."

Fudge bit into his brownie, still finding it odd to eat a pastry with only fourteen distinct flavorings.

"Still, to keep them in line, even for a brief time, is something I've never seen our people do with Potter and his misfits. I wish that a mere expedition to Hogwart's could calm all this turbulence and loose talk of reborn archfoes."

Travers rubbed his chin.

"Turbulence. Cornelius---think of Henry The Second and Beckett."

Though certainly a Muggle story, it was one that Fudge knew well enough, though he failed to see what Travers was driving at.

"What of them?"

"Well, don't you see? Either in a drunken state or knowing full well who was listening, Henry begged to be rid of Beckett, his 'turbulent priest.' Twoknights went out and did just that for him. Ended the crisis."

Fudge looked shocked.

"Surely you're not suggesting I assassinate the boy?"

"No, not at all. But perhaps you do need to direct your efforts to impeach the boy's credibility in a more forceful way. Find an aide who is more ends-oriented than most, and then express supreme exasperation with Harry Potter in their presence. They'll go off, thinking they have a free hand to act, while you will walk blameless through it all. I assume you have such an aide. What of that red-haired lunatic? I'm surprised he hasn't been locked away for something.

During our last document exchange, I thought he must surely have bodies buried somewhere."

"No, Quentin. Foul family that's produced a fair man. But even he's not quite one I'd call for being fixated on a given goal, at least not well enough. Ahhh--Dolores. She's a bulldog, that one. It won't even take much suggestion. Many, many thanks, Quentin. Now I may actually enjoy my coffee."

"Well enough for you. I wish I could. There is the matter of the First, to keep me up nights."

Fudge shook his head.

"My friend, you have no more to fear from that one than from the specter that haunts the girls' water closets at Hogwart's. Think clearly. It has no substance. Its soldiers are likely the one set of lackeys more easily identifiable than the Death Eaters were, back during their uprising. I mean,

well--runes for eyes? Oh, you'll never see them coming--and neither will they!"

Travers laughed with him.

"I suppose that if we're smart and keep to our stronghold, what amounts to a mere taunting spirit can't really harm us."

"Exactly. I have always said--were I not a Wizard, I would gladly serve in Britain's other most efficient paranormal control organization. I've thought that doubly since you took the reins. I've heard those rallying speeches you give--stirring."

"Why thank you, my friend. Though, believe it or not, I'm told our problem Slayer is quite the rousing speechmaker. Suppose she had to get something right."

The two men got up to leave, Travers paying as promised. Fudge left an addition to their tip, and nodded in satisfaction.

"These so-called crusading heroes. Why oh why don't they leave to us those things we know best?"

Travers slapped him on the back.

"Because, Cornelius, they have only their own sorry bands of misfits to turn to when things go badly awry, while we have men the caliber of ourselves to consult with. That is why we endure, and why these flavors of the moment do not."

Within the next year, one of these very wise men would be dead, and the other would sometimes wish he was. For they each followed the other's advice to the letter--and more the pity.


End file.
